together, of the aching kind
by glueskin
Summary: some ten years past, aymeric pursues the friendship of one who scorns him not for his birth, but simply because he scorns everyone. aymeric/estinien, preslash.


ffxiv has consumed my entire life. i finished heavensward the other day (mostly. im like, pre-stormblood now, with only a few main story quests left...oh god?) and lets just say i really, uh went through it.

i needed to write aymeric/estinien but i didnt know what i wanted to do so my friend was like "their training days where aymeric is trying so hard to be friends with the local goth" and i became possessed. i wrote this after being awake for 27, almost 30, hours, and then i went into a coma.

title is from "after the storm" by teen girl scientist monthly. catch me on twitter ( blackshrouds) screaming about ffxiv at any given moment

warning for implications of internalized homophobia and some blood/character injury. estinien is selectively mute. why? The Trauma.

* * *

Estinien is alone again.

Hair tied back and with dark shadows under his eyes that speak of another sleepless night, rubbing bruise salve along his aching arms by himself. The other fledgling knights and would-be dragoons give him a wide berth, as they always do.

They had spoken already, in a way—joint training means an excuse for Aymeric to test his blade against Estinien's lance. For someone like Estinien, whose words have long left him, that is the only conversation Aymeric has found him willing to give.

And yet, for some reason, Aymeric persists. Once again as the others leave to tend each others wounds, most intending to make their ways to the bar for drinks and talks of upcoming border patrol assignments, Aymeric instead approaches Estinien where he's slouched between the wall and medicine cabinet.

Estinien glowers up at him, as always, but Aymeric doesn't greet him with his voice today.

_"Your strikes hit as hard as ever, my friend," _he signs, hands remarkably steady despite the aching in his own arms. For once, he sees Estinien with an expression of pure surprise—no wariness or his ever present anger, just shock, and Aymeric finds that expression alone made seeking Haurchefant's assistance in this was well worth it, even with all the embarrassing jibes it had brought.

_"When in Fury's name did you learn sign?" _Estinien demands as he rises to his feet, hands moving almost too fast for Aymeric to understand. But Haurchefant signs fast, too, so he at least has practice.

It's hard to tell if Estinien's expression is one of genuine anger or just more shock. It would be easier if he would speak, but Aymeric can count the times he has heard Estinien's voice on one hand—not counting the almost animalistic noises that rise in his chest and throat in battle.

_"Wouldn't you like to know?" _Aymeric responds, and he doesn't think it comes off nearly as sly—_not _coy, damn Haurchefant and his jests—as it would if he spoke it aloud. Hopefully his bland expression makes it so, regardless.

Estinien snarls, but he's grinning, or something like it—the same sort of expression he'd worn the first time Aymeric had bested him in a spar, lance skittering across the training yard and pinned down by the touch of cold steel to his throat.

He'd stopped ignoring Aymeric outright, after that. He'd glower and sneer at him, but he would never move away when Aymeric sat with him in the dining halls or during tactical lessons.

This, he has come to understand, is Estinien's idea of being 'friendly'.

_"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't, now would I?" _Estinien signs, but when Aymeric begins to answer the other man's gaze shifts from his hands up his own arms. He clicks his tongue, and Aymeric belatedly realizes in his haste to approach Estinien he'd neglected his own injuries.

It's years of practice that keeps his face from burning with embarrassment.

Estinien shoves the jar of salve he'd been using into Aymeric's hands, not meeting his gaze and looking almost flustered as he grabs his lance from where it rests against the wall, storming off to do whatever it is he tends to do when not in training.

_Progress_, Aymeric thinks, pleased with himself. That's the most extensive interaction he's had with Estinien before, not including the physical aspect of sparring or just sitting quietly together.

That fact alone feels better even than the soothing ointment that eases growing ache of his bruises.

* * *

Aymeric's private victory is short lived. Not a week later does he find himself with Estinien in the Western Highlands, the the sight of their bloodied comrades sticking behind his eyelids. He can't feel any pride for the slain dragon, held down by his sword through its wing and Estinien's lance impaled through its skull.

He feels only an emptiness in his chest. It is, he finds, one thing to know of loss, to expect it, and another to experience it.

None of their platoon had cared for him. Not for Aymeric, not for Estinien either—but they were good men and women despite it, fighting to their last.

He's gazing vacantly at the empty-eyed stare of their platoon captain. A woman who had looked at him with scorn and derision, muttering behind her hand about the rumors that plague his birth. A woman who had, in the last moments of her life, thrown herself in front of a gaping maw that sought to catch Aymeric in its jaws.

He barely hears the sound of Estinien stumbling off the creatures back or the wet sound of him wrenching his lance out of its body.

Someone shakes his shoulder, but he can't bring himself to look away. He can't even let himself blink. He feels as if he isn't allowed—that he has to remember every nauseating detail of what he sees.

"Ay-_meric_," an almost unfamiliar voice snarls out, rough with disuse, and _that _jars Aymeric out of his daze. Estinien is clutching his shoulder, his usually wild eyed gaze something unusually close to concern.

"Aymeric?" He repeats, less roughly, as if to be sure he actually has Aymeric's attention.

"Estinien," Aymeric breathes out, eyes wide now for a different reason.

He realizes, suddenly, that he's wanted to hear his name spoken in Estinien's voice for a long time now, and that fact means something. But he can't feel any pleasure from it, now.

"You're...hurt," Estinien grounds the words out, gesturing vaguely to his head, and Aymeric lifts a hand to touch the back of his skull. His fingers come away sticky with blood—he had been shoved aside landed in the shallow river, smacking his head into the rocks.

Ah. That explains why he's so dizzy, then.

"You too," Aymeric says, blinking rapidly down at Estinien's arm. His armor was of poor quality—easily the dragon had torn its claws into him, tearing great gashes into the flesh.

It's not his preferred arm, at least, Aymeric thinks with distant relief on Estinien's behalf. The adrenaline must be leaving him then, because his vision briefly swims. He doesn't process Estinien's hoarse cursing, the thud of both their weapons dropping as he's caught in Estinien's deceptively lean arms.

"No - _no _sleeping," Estinien chokes out under Aymeric's weight, shaking him with both hands. "Keep your eyes - _open_."

If only because Estinien is clearly putting so much effort into speaking, Aymeric forces his eyes open, blinking quickly to clear the white edges out of his vision—but he can't, and he realizes after a moment it's Estinien's hair, snowy in the evening light.

It shines like the snowmelt Aymeric had innocuously admired not hours before during the start of their patrol.

"Sorry," Aymeric manages to say, trying to push himself off of the other man, but Estinien has a firm grasp on his shoulders.

His vision blurs again as he's led to the river nearby, forcefully pushed into a sitting position. He lets Estinien manhandle him, if only because he can barely think; every time he blinks he sees the white of Estinien's hair or the red-soaked grass around their comrades bodies, but all he hears is the way Estinien had growled at him to keep his eyes open.

And so, no matter how much he wants to, he doesn't let them slip shut for long.

Something cold and damp touches the back of his head, making him startle. But it's just Estinien again, so he relaxes, not shaking off the grip on his shoulder or pulling back from the damp touch to the back of his skull.

"You should find the other patrol," Aymeric says, voice sluggish and slurring as though he's had one too many drinks. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him before—but what if that dragon hadn't been alone? What if its kin felt its death? Estinien clicks his tongue.

"Patrol will...find _us_," he says. The hand on Aymeric's shoulder moves to his hair, trying to part the matted mess in the back to give him better access to the wound. "I leave, you sleep. You can't sleep."

"I'm not tired," Aymeric mutters, but his eyes keep slipping shut. What kind of stupid statement is that—of course he's not tired, but he's _concussed_, so whether he is or not doesn't matter. "Sorry."

Estinien snarls wordlessly, gripping his hair so tightly that it pulls the damaged skin of his scalp taught and has Aymeric groaning in sharp pain. Immediately Estinien lets go, grabbing his shoulder once more instead and moving him so that Aymeric is facing him.

He looks furious and apologetic both—the former is common, the latter far less so.

"Do not be - _sorry _. You got up. You pinned that blasphe - _blasphemous _creature, so I could," Estinien sucks in a ragged breath, clearly unused to having to speak so much. Aymeric wonders, somewhere in his mind, how long its been since Estinien has spoken like this, and if being forced to do so right now will damage the tentative friendship Aymeric had succeeded in wrangling from him.

"Both of us would be dead," Estinien finally says. "If you had not gotten up."

Aymeric blinks again. It's a painfully slow action, given the effort it takes to keep himself from letting his eyes stay shut, but he thinks—he thinks Estinien is _worried_. For him.

It's probably the concussion. But it's a nice thought regardless, and Aymeric, forgetting that Estinien is skittish to touch, drops his head tiredly to his shoulder.

Of course Estinien stiffens. Aymeric is too tired to pull away, though, and is going to apologize again when Estinien eases his grip on Aymeric's shoulders into something more gentle.

"Eyes open. No sleep," he reminds roughly, not pushing Aymeric away.

"No sleep," Aymeric agrees. He wants to ask Estinien to keep talking—his voice is so nice, and he wants to hear his name from him again, but the selfishness of the request is something not even his concussion-addled brain will permit.

Time passes in a haze, then. Estinien goes quiet except to periodically ask if he's asleep, to which Aymeric always mumbles a response to, face still pressed in the rough leather of Estinien's shoulderpads.

Eventually, he hears other voices, and by then he can't keep his eyes open. He's so far gone he doesn't process anything he hears; something lifts him, a hand far less gentle—and less welcome—than Estinien's touching the drying mess of blood at the back of his head.

He tries to protest. Before the words can reach his lips, however, the grips of sleep finally take him after an eternity of avoidance.

* * *

Aymeric comes into awareness in bits and pieces. He wakes several times—en route to Ishgard, when they arrived at the medical bay, and briefly when Estinien had half-climbed onto his bedside with that same furiously apologetic look he had worn in the Highlands.

Well. The last one was probably just his imagination. But when he awakens again, his thoughts clearer than the muddled mess they had been as the adrenaline left him, his gut burns with guilt and shame at the blurry memory of how he had draped himself onto Estinien and entertained such thoughts about him—from finding him beautiful even as he found himself wracked with grief to the fact he had almost put such selfish demands for his voice into words.

Even though he's awake, he keeps his eyes closed. Haurchefant's jibes are not just jibes, as he's known all along. But Estinien cannot possibly be like him, or even like Haurchefant, who is at least willing to entertain the notion of women.

He gives himself just long enough to bury those feelings. The guilt, the shame, and even the grief over his lost comrades. He prays briefly, selfishly, to not have damaged his fledgling friendship with Estinien with these wants, though surely Estinien couldn't have realized.

When he's finished, he forces his eyes open. The medical bay is lit dimly by several oil lamps, the curtains at the window drawn tightly shut.

The first thing he sees is the ceiling, followed by a vaguely familiar Hyur man—it takes only a moment for his brain to register that it's the former Azure Dragoon, clad not in the armor of his squadron but in civvies.

"Awake, are you?" Alberic Bale asks rhetorically, his low voice quiet. When Aymeric's gaze wanders, he sees why—the other occupant of the room is, of course, Estinien. With the color of his hair and the pallor of his skin, Aymeric's breathing catches with brief fear before he registers the rise and fall of the man's chest.

"I'm told I have you to thank for this damnable child coming back home," Alberic continues, and it's jarring to hear anyone call Estinien a child, given that he's already at twenty-two summers. But then he recalls the rumors that Alberic is not simply Estinien's mentor, but that he had raised him, and realizes his presence here all but confirms those whispers.

"He's the one who saved me," Aymeric denies, his dry throat aching as he speaks. He keeps his voice quieter even than Alberic's, fearful of waking Estinien. "If he hadn't kept me awake…" he trails off, not wanting to think about what might have happened if Estinien had truly left him as Aymeric tried to tell him to.

Alberic snorts, jerking his head in the direction of his foster son.

"Funny. This sniveling brat was using his blasted words for once, insisting he would have died if you hadn't been on your feet despite taking a blow to the head. Threw a godsdamned fit when I tried to drag him home, too," he goes on, and Aymeric remembers what had to have been a dream—Estinien, half-climbed into his cot, looking like an angelic wraith above him.

His face burns. Though well practiced at remaining stoic even when feeling such embarrassment—thank you, Haurchefant—he's too tired to stop the flush before it begins. Alberic lets out a low, throaty chuckle. If he suspects anything, he says nothing else, just gives a smile that wrinkles the edges of his eyes as he leaves the room at last.

When the door swings shut, Aymeric exhales all of his anxiety. Slowly he sits himself up, his body aching like one giant bruise and his head throbbing. A glass of water has been left by his cot, which he takes with shaking hands, much to the relief of his parched throat.

Across the room, Estinien stirs beneath his blankets, muttering something under his breath before going quiet once more. Aymeric closes his eyes and counts each slow breath as he sinks back into the cot, and lets himself at least indulge in the comfort of the audible proof that Estinien lives. That he lives, that he's close enough to hear, and that he at least cares.

As a friend. Nothing more, nothing less. It's enough, Aymeric thinks, and even if he never hears Estinien's voice again, at least he can selfishly keep the memory of this one instance close—unfortunate circumstances and context be damned.


End file.
